New Favorites: Collecting in the Bancroft Tradition

For the first time in many years The Bancroft Library presents
an exhibition of recent additions to its major collections. The
exhibition also includes recently rediscovered masterpieces
carefully collected in years past. Gold-Rush-era memoirs
and advertisements, early editions of William Langland and
Jane Austen, branded books from 18th c. Mexico, and David Johnsons photographs of the African American
community in San Francisco after World War II are but a
few of the items featured. The exhibition showcases the
Bancroft curators and their distinctive collecting practices,
which expand the remarkable vision of library founder
Hubert Howe Bancroftdocumenting California as it was
happening and building a library for the American West that
would rival its older European antecedents.